Through the past darkly: Reflections on UFC 161

I got about as far as customs before I heard the first rumblings of discontent in Winnipeg. It came from the customs officer who stamped my passport and quizzed me on my reasons for seeking entry into this particular part of Canada.

I told him I was there to cover the UFC event. His head snapped up. “What do you think of this card?” he said. Right then I knew I was among friends.

“I’ve seen worse,” I told him.

“But you’ve seen better too, right?” he said.

I admitted that I had, and then we talked about the UFC’s trip to Calgary this past summer. That card was worse than this one, we agreed. Still, just talking about the UFC 161 lineup made my friend in customs shake his head. “We get the leftovers,” he said.

I heard this sentiment a lot over the course of my two days in Winnipeg. Mostly it was from people in bars, or people standing just outside bars, or people weaving from one bar to the next. This is how I’ll remember Winnipeg, as a collection of bars with some streets thrown in to make them easier to get to.

Some of the talk, though, was from people at the MTS Centre on fight night. These were people who had actually paid for tickets before the thing sold out, and even they knew that this wasn’t the best the UFC could do. Of course they did. They’re fight fans, after all. You think they can’t tell the difference between the UFC’s A-game and its first-time-in-a-new-Canadian-market game?

The more Winnipeggers I talked to, the more I got the sense that they knew exactly how the UFC saw them. They knew that, as far as the Zuffa brass was concerned, they were the people who were so eager for the chance to see a UFC event that they’d pay for almost anything. For the most part, it didn’t seem to bother them that much. Even my friend at customs lamented that a friend’s wedding would keep him from attending UFC 161, “because when something like that does come here, you want to support it and make it successful.”

With a sellout crowd and a $3 million-plus live gate, according to UFC President Dana White, the Winnipeg fans certainly accomplished that. They might have also inadvertently reinforced the UFC’s belief that it can save its really good stuff for the big markets, and rely on the rabid Canadian fans to pay for whatever’s left at the end.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. As my colleague Matt Erickson and I trudged through security on our way out of Winnipeg early Sunday morning, a woman took one look at us and asked, “Hunting, fishing or fights?” We told her it was the fights that had brought us to her fair city. She nodded. “I knew it had to be one of the three.”

Maybe anything that adds another item to the list isn’t so bad.

Some other observations from fight night in The Peg …

Just enough swagger to get the job done, but not enough for a clear way forward

Before his main event bout with Dan Henderson, Rashad Evans said he needed to get back to being the cocky fighter who would “embarrass” opponents for daring to sign the bout agreement. If you were playing MMA Bingo at home, here’s where you’d mark the square for “Fighter Promises to Bring Back Idealized Version of Old Self.”

The Evans who squeaked out a split decision over Hendo didn’t exactly swagger to a dominant victory, but at least he made it to the winner’s circle in the end. He was more aggressive than he’d been against Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, and yet not as reckless as he was when he lost his title to Lyoto Machida. He was somewhere in the middle, which is to say good enough to win, but just barely, and without doing anything special to get fans excited for his next fight. So now what?

“I would love to get a shot at Jon Jones again,” Evans said at the post-fight press conference. “I would love to get back to where I was and where I can be, as far as going out there and being spectacular every single fight, but the landscape has changed. It’s pretty tough.”

That’s true. It is tough to beat up all the other top 205-pound fighters in the world. Then again, isn’t that what the swagger was for? And if you don’t think you can dominate a bunch of other skilled fighters, what do you hope to do? Aside from just barely enough to win, that is.

Clarke’s first UFC win makes for an emotional night

If you watched the UFC 161 prelims, you saw Mitch Clarke fall to his knees in tears after Bruce Buffer announced a unanimous decision victory for Clarke over John Maguire. What you didn’t see was the slightly more restrained, yet still teary-eyed explanation that followed backstage.

“I think the big thing was redemption,” said Clarke, who came up just short in his last fight, suffering a split-decision loss to Anton Kuivanen that dropped him to 0-2 in his UFC run. “My personal life fell apart after that last fight. All I could think about was, ‘Should I still be doing this? Do I belong here?’ You question yourself, and I did everything I needed to, sacrificed even more, and this is what happens.”

That helps to explain why he could be heard on the broadcast, shouting through the tears, “That was all I wanted.” But that’s the thing about wanting: When you get what you want, you usually start wanting something else.

“Everyone wants to make it to the UFC,” said Clarke. “That [was] all I wanted. Well, being a loser in the UFC is the same as being loser … you’re still a loser. … I don’t want to be a loser. I just wanted a little taste of that glory. I wanted to win.”

Against Maguire, he did. Then he cried. Then he cried while explaining why he’d cried. Then, as he limped out of the press room following the interview, one of his coaches asked, “Did you cry again?” That’s when they laughing started. There’d been enough crying for one evening.

Heavyweights in transition, futures in doubt

I’m not quite sure how to describe the look on Roy Nelson‘s bruised, swollen face as Dana White announced that he’d set a UFC record for “significant strikes absorbed” without being knocked out, but he didn’t look pleased. According to White, Nelson’s been hit with 487 blows in his UFC career, and he’s yet to fall down so badly that the referee waves it off. So, um, congratulations?

Nelson’s UFC contract ended with the unanimous decision loss to Stipe Miocic, and as White stood at the podium explaining that situation at the post-fight presser, Nelson sat there shaking his head.

“As far as I know, I was told to fight,” Nelson said when asked what, exactly, he disagreed with in White’s assessment. “I’m here to save [UFC] 161, gave the crowd exactly what they wanted to see, and went out and tried to do my best with the time that I had.”

After the presser wrapped, however, Nelson had a brief conversation with White that ended with the UFC president telling him to “get everyone in a room” to sort out a matter White would only hint at.

“He said he doesn’t want to talk about it publicly, so we won’t talk about it publicly,” White said. “But no, it’s not about making a deal.”

After a little more prodding, White added, “Somebody’s not telling the truth about something. … I told him, ‘Let’s f—ing do it right now. Go get everybody in a room right now and we’ll see who’s telling the truth and who’s not.'”

What that means for Nelson’s future is still unclear, but White admitted that the UFC still wants his services. It’s just a matter of whether they can agree on what those services are worth, especially after Nelson showed up looking not quite prepared for a fight that he clearly thought would improve his negotiating position. Instead he ran into an opponent who was faster, sharper, and better all-around than many expected.

It’s easy to lose sight of that with the drama of the Nelson contract story, but let’s not gloss over the fact that Miocic beat a top-10 heavyweight and looked fantastic doing it. It seems like we’ve been hearing about the promise of a former Golden Gloves boxer with college wrestling experience for a couple years now. On Saturday we got a glimpse of what that promise might look like if it becomes a reality.

The aftermath of an illegal blow

Yves Jabouin showed up backstage after his win over Dustin Pague sporting a bandage on his cheek that couldn’t quite contain the cut it concealed.

“He got me with an illegal knee toward the end,” Jabouin said and pointed at his cheek, where blood bubbled up between the bandages. “I was down and … that’s where this came from.”

When it happened, the knee from Pague to the head of a downed Jabouin seemed like a glancing shot. Referee Adam Cheadle didn’t see it, or at least he didn’t do anything about it. What he didn’t realize was that Jabouin had been significantly affected by a foul, and one that went entirely unpunished.

“For a split-second there, I was stunned,” Jabouin said. “I guess the ref didn’t see it. That’s where he was able to mount me and it could have cost me the fight.”

It didn’t, as Jabouin managed to hang on and win the split decision, but it underscores the need for capable, competent refs. The entire fight can change from one illegal blow. So can a person’s face.

Shields continues to win fights, but not fans

If you follow Dana White on Twitter, you already know what he thought of Jake Shields‘ split-decision win over Tyron Woodley. It was a slow, mostly non-eventful three-round affair that resulted in one judge giving every round to Woodley. The other two, however, went with Shields, who later argued that he deserved to win mostly based on effort.

“I felt like I won just by pushing the pace,” Shields told reporters backstage. “I felt like I was doing all the attacks with the stand-up, pushing him, and I was the one trying to take him down, being aggressive.”

The thing is, though, he didn’t actually get any takedowns. Not a single one. Not in 18 attempts, according to FightMetric. He also didn’t do much to win over the fans who regard him as a boring fighter, or to impress his bosses. He said he hopes to move up the ranks and face a top welterweight next, but that’s tough to do when your wins are so unsatisfying. Shields might have outworked Woodley, but it’s hard to feel like he beat him. Rarely is that a recipe for success in the UFC.

Pierson learns a lesson about payback

Nothing about Sean Pierson‘s face suggested that he’d just won a cage fight, and he knew it. After winning the first two rounds against Kenny Robertson, he took a beating in the third that left a bad taste in his mouth and a lot of damage on his head.

“No matter how I look at it, I got hit way too many times in that third round to appreciate anything,” said Pierson, who described getting pummeled by Robertson while silently chastising himself for “giving [his] wife a heart attack” as she watched at home.

The problem, Pierson said, is that he can’t seem to stop himself from seeking immediate revenge when he gets hit with a good shot.

“When you hit me, I want to hit you back,” Pierson explained. “That’s what I envy about Georges St-Pierre. I train with him all the time, but he’s really smart because when he gets clipped, he doesn’t try to get that punch back right away. He’s like, cool. He dances around, [follows] his game plan, and he hits you back when he wants to hit you back.”

It’s something he can do in training, Pierson said, but in a fight his “ego gets in the way.”

“I get clipped and right away I’m like, I want my point back right now,” he said. “I want to hit you back right now, and that’s not the smartest situation, so I’m working on that.”

He’d better work fast. I’m not sure his face – or his wife’s heart – can take too many more nights like that one.

Krause’s big finish

Though he probably would have pocketed a $50,000 bonus for “Fight of the Night” against Sam Stout even without the guillotine-choke submission in the waning moments of round three, that finish nudged James Krause‘s bonus pay up into the six figures, and it was all a result of following the plan his coaches laid out for him, Krause said.

Though Krause took the fight on short-notice after Stout’s original opponent, Isaac Vallie-Flagg, pulled out with an injury, he said he’d been “expecting a call” from the UFC and made sure to stay in shape.

“We loved the matchup right out of the gate,” Krause said. “We knew Sam was so tough, and we knew coming into Canada it was going to be hard to win a decision here. Obviously, he’d never been finished in [his current stint in the] UFC, so we knew we were in for a fight.”

How Krause thought he’d get the finish was in exploiting Stout’s tendency to try and steal rounds with late takedowns, which is exactly how Stout wound up in Krause’s guillotine late in the third.

“I heard his corner say, ‘Try to steal the round,’ and I was waiting for it,” Krause said.

When he heard White announce that he’d won bonuses for “Submission of the Night” and “Fight of the Night,” the shock and awe were all over Krause’s face. Now all he has to do is hope he passed the most important drug test of his life.

As the UFC 189 tour made its last stop in Dublin, featherweight champ Jose Aldo was met with a torrent of abuse from the Irish fans. It might have been unpleasant, but it might also have been just what he needed.